ISLAMABAD, March 27: The People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) has said any election in which the true leaders of the people are not allowed to participate will be sham and the resultant political dispensation will continue to be devoid of legitimacy and multiply peoples’ woes. In a statement here on Sunday, party spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar referred to President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s remarks that former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif would not be allowed to return to the country before 2007.

Mr Babar said the problems besetting the country arose out of lack of legitimacy of the post-October 2002 elections dispensation. “Pakistan will never be a truly democratic country as long as the shadows of military dictatorship are not wiped out through fair and free elections under an autonomous election commission.”

He said in the absence of true democracy the problems of the country such as that of Balochistan would continue to multiply.

“The test-tube assembly produced as a result of elections described by the Commonwealth as flawed cannot even address the issue of quorum let alone addressing the myriad problems of governance,” he remarked.

The PPP spokesman said dictators should draw lesson from the example of three Central Asian states which recently saw misgovernance and mayhem followed by the toppling of the regimes because the political dispensation in those countries was perceived to be based on fraudulent elections and manipulated power transfer.

Mr Babar said General Musharraf would do well to remember that president Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan was also considered to be liberal and progressive among the Central Asian leaders.

“Claims of enlightened moderation cannot save a system which is perceived to be based on fraudulent elections and in which people have been robbed of their mandate,” he added.